In His Image

It is with great thankfulness in my heart, that I get to present to you, my newest daughter,

Aimee Lynne Stauffer (but she shall be called “Lynne”)

There are many thing of which I could write, bu since I got to do most of the calling on the phone, I will let my wife share the details over on her blog.  But for right now, I will share that she was born last night, at 8:47 pm, and weighed 9 lbs and 6 oz.

“Thank you Lord for trusting us with any gift from you!  May we always remember that you have only loaned them to us and that our greatest job to bring them back to you!  Oh Lord, may you give me the grace and ability to humbly mirror the picture of you, onto the hearts of my children.”

I know that this song is an old one but I just found it a couple of weeks ago and it has blessed me so much! It was written by Bill & Gloria Gaither and the music was written by Buddy Greene.

It has been a LONG time since I wrote here and I find that the longer I have children, the less time I have for this! However, I still want to try to stay on top of this every once in a while so you will just have to be grateful for what you get until I can find some “spare-time”! This is the biggest joke around our house right now, “We’ll do that when we get some spare time!” Usually meaning that we will get to it in the next 12 years of so.My wife wrote a while back about our new endeavor this year, that of raising bees for honey. It has been quite the experience and very much a learning one! It seems to my father and I that the more we work with the bees, the less we know! Aimee and I decided to just get one hive this spring and so bought the equipment, hive bodies, and about 3 lbs. Of bees to get started, while my father bought enough for 10 hives.

The Lord blessed our hives in the fact that they were able to get up to full size very quickly and we were all excited about the upcoming nectar flow! Then we found out what “swarming” was! It seems that when the bees get really bored or are not finding enough of nectar, they will make a new queen and just before she hatches, about one-quarter to half the bees in the hive will all of a sudden take wing and leave the hive. I would try to explain this sight and sound to you, but it is incredible to watch and hard to accurately describe!

You have about 50 to 60 thousand bees all just streaming from the hive and flying up into a column about 20 feet across and 30 feet high. This make such a loud buzzing noise that you can hear it from a hundred feet away!. As the queen and her nurse bees move in one general direction, the whole mass moves with her until she lands on a branch somewhere and then they all land on the branch and by looping the hooks on the ends of their legs together, they make a mound of bees with all the ones at the bottom, hanging from all the bees on the branch.)

We wait until they have mostly clumped up on he branch and then if the branch is not too big or important, we gently cut it off and carry the bees back down to the ground. Of all the swarms this year, we have only had two that were way up in a tree, about thirty feet up a birch tree here in our yard. When we get down to the ground, we have a new hive sitting there on a big piece of cardboard with the top off. We then position the branch over the hive so that when we shake the bees off, most will go into the open hive and the rest out in front of it. Because the legs of the bees are hooked together, all have to do to get the bee’s off, is to gently give it a little quick drop, and the whole mass drops into the hive. But because they are bees, a bunch of the will immediately take flight again and you need to quickly get the cover back on. Then the next part is what really amazes me! They bees that are out in front of the cardboard, know almost instantly if the queen is in the hive. If she is, they position themselves facing towards the hive and fanning their wings to beat the band! The harmonics of these thousands of bees doing this, as well as the chemical smell they give off when they have a new home, attracts the rest of the bees and they will spend the next half hour to and hour, slowly taking their turns, walking into the new hive.

We currently have 18 hives and have missed three more swarms. It means that we will not get quite as much honey this fall, but if we have a good winter, we may be able to sell the extra hives next spring.

On a Garden note.
When we lived in Pa. We struggle so much with potato bugs! We tried all sorts of sprays and only found one that really seemed to work, M-1. However when we moved out here, the manufactures of the spray, quit making it and so we battled the bugs with our fingers and small cans of gasoline.

However! We heard a couple years ago that if you plant really aromatic marigolds between your potatoes’, you will have fewer potato bugs. They were right!! This is the second year in a row that we have had few if any bugs and they are the biggest and bushiest potato plants I have seen in a long time!! We planted a marigold plant every four or five potato plants. It has worked and we are so grateful that we have a remedy that does not include the use of harsh chemicals! Just an idea for those of you still fighting these little pests!!

If you are still looking for our other sites, Here is the link to Aimee’s current blog and my main one.

I doubt that there is any one who is still reading this due to my long absence, and maybe the content or ability of this writer.  However I have not forgotten this blog, but have resigned myself to the fact that in the scheme of Christian life and fatherhood, there are other responsibilities that must come first.

One of the thoughts that have been going around my head is this;  There is such a strong connection between the image we have of our earthly father, and the way we see God.  I have often seen this in other people but only recently come to realize what I leaving to my children.

Take for instance the woman who had a very angry father and rarely, if ever, heard praise or expressions of love from him.  She is very prone to see God in the same light and finds it hard to reconcile the God that she reads in the Bible, who loves her and cares for her personally, when the only earthly example she has is giving her a drastically different picture!  This is just one case in point but you get my drift.  The children of a loving, adoring father, have a hard time coming to grips with the unswerving justice and judgment of God, etc.

My questions that keep running through my head are these.  Why would God choose such failing creatures to imprint a picture of Him onto the soft impressionable hearts and minds of our children?  You heard the old adage, “Children never really grow up, until they become parents.  Then their children ‘raise’ them.”  I have made so many blunders already that I wonder if I will ever be able to show them more accurately who their Father REALLY is!!  It really can put the weight on you to make sure that you always walk straight and true to God’s truth!  Just this afternoon, I found my eldest son again emulating one of my baser struggles.  When he did not get his brother to comply with his wishes by asking in a normal volume of voice, he ratcheted it up a notch and used a tone that stated loud and clear that he was not going to be trifled with in this issue!  I reprimanded him for it but found myself realizing afresh that my children are learning daily, that which I do not seek to teach!

The second question is this, since I have and earthly and imperfect father, how do I overcome the somewhat skewed picture I have of God?  I have read the Bible for many years and have found the Lord to be most precious on many fronts, but I still keep coming back to that same tinted glass view of what I think God is!  I seem unable to see Him from the “other” perspective, or if I do catch a glimpse, it is always secondary to my original view!  Is this the way that God wants it to be?  Is this the heritage I am destined to leave my children? 

I so long to see God for who He really and truly is and to then do my best to exemplify Him to my children.  And if I find what God shows me to be a “better” way, how do I implement that without hurting my earthly father or thinking less of him for his humanness?

Truly the weight of fatherhood is not to be taken lightly, but it pains me so to see the imperfect shadow that I am leaving behind and that they will have to walk in!  Oh God, help me walk true!!

Lee Justin Hess (23) of Trail, MN died in an automobile accident at 10:40 P.M. on Dec 19, 2006. He was born in Centralia, IL on January 24, 1983.

Lee assisted his family in grain farming in Northwestern MN. He was a member of Kitchi Pines Church near Pennington, MN. He has participated in mission and relief projects in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Thailand on several occasions.

He is survived by parents, William L. and Carol J. Hess, two brothers, Philip (21) and Kurt (16), three sisters, Judith (13), Laura (11) and Pearl (9). He is also survived by paternal grandparents, Oliver F. and Dorothy M. (Witmer) Hess of Russellville, KY and maternal grandmother Elva (Keens) Martin of Kell, IL. He was preceded in death by his maternal grandfather Elmer G. Martin.

Viewing will be on Dec 26^th from 6-8 P.M. at the Evangelical Covenant Church in Bemidji, MN. Funeral services will be on Dec 27^th at 10:00 AM. at the same location followed by interment at the Wildwood Cemetery near Pennington, MN.